Atomic Heat is everything I have been dreaming of having in a FPS game BUT it also comes with a luggage that I do not like to carry around.

Atomic Heart opens up with a great introduction to this steampunkish Soviet Union Utopia achieved by power of friendly robots, not so long after, as you would be expecting, an unlikely uprising turns these robots into weapons of destruction.

At first, its great to see your character is trying to be the unrealistic hero that wants to bring all to an end, instead major P3 and his glove Ally Charles, are trying to put pieces together to see what went wrong. Sadly tho, the so called peaclover and loyal P3 never really develops well. Result = one of the worst main characters I have ever seen. I really do love the amount of dialogues and lore in this game but it doesnt fix the main character.
Tho, without spoiling much, i kinda got to admit he did grow on me more toward the end!
you see the game takes such a steep curve toward the ending with its conclusion, and I'd say overall its a good one.

Where the game shines, is in its combat and series of Complexes which you get to visit. Each of them has a unique set of mechanics as puzzles to solve, unique environments and lots of rich story telling, if that is your thing to sit through them all. for me its a NO...
There is theater that I enjoyed a lot... a lab... a factory and more and more. Each of these areas are beautiful in nature and are well designed, while its a long game, I am surprised to see the quality is even through the entire game.

Combat is great, its not as fast as doom eternal, but its paced evenly through the course of game and its worth mention it has a great feedback too. What's annoying tho is that: 1. initially you are really underarmed and you have to somewhat grind to be able to take advantage of the little you have. 2. P3 getting knocked back again and again is really not fun. - I do understand the significant of dodging but there should be a limit for the amount of special attacks that launches toward you with knock outs....

Where the game falls, is in the open world. There are optional dungeons (called testing grounds) which are crucial to visit if you want more loot (to craft and upgrade anything) and then there is just a lush open space that is travesable using a car and its filled with houses here and there that has a lot loot.
You heard me saying loot a lot right ? its essential ... P3 looting is great fun, hold Charles (the gloves) and it automatically compress everything to useable material. These material are then used to upgrade weapons and craft more weapons and also upgrade charles abilities.
Once you properly upgrade tho, you can slowly start to feel P3 can get overpowred. Frost, electrify, shield, polymer gel ... all are fun to use and switch.
Whats annoying about the open world is the security system. You cant destroy it, it will spot you, it will spawn a sea of enemies .... if you end up killing everything, then you realise it only takes 5 seconds for repair bots to respawn everything again :))...

This stupid arrangement continues to takes place within dungeons and open world and its really game breaking in my opinion. IT breaks the open world immersion and it breaks the combat flow too...

Overall, with all its annoying flaws, Atomic heart was rather an enjoyable 7/10 experience for me.